Sam Khalandovsky

After discovering that Neato robot vacuum cleaners have fully functioning scanning LIDAR sensors and an available USB interface for getting all of that data, I wrote up some ROS drivers for it, hooked it up to some localization and mapping packages, and tweaked them for the robot's dimensions. Essentially, I've got a TurtleBot. Maybe its turning isn't quite as precise, but it also doesn't cost $2000.

Since a tethered robot isn't much fun, I hooked it up with Raspberry Pi and a battery in the dust-bin area to act as its brain, and used the Pi Camera for a live video feed. With this setup, I could access the Pi remotely over the internet from anywhere, give commands to drive the robot, and view the live video. Next steps could be:

• Hook up to Pi to the robot's internal battery, so that it could charge itself from the charging station
• Make a web-interface for the remote connection
• Give it some autonomy to patrol the house